Serial rapist not happy with 77-year prison sentence

A 25-year-old serial rapist, whose victims included a 16-year-old girl, got mouthy Thursday after a Franklin County judge sentenced him to 77 years in prison.

Kaquawn Lane, formerly of Gahanna, refused to sign a form confirming that he would register as a sex offender every 90 days after his release from prison.

“I’ll never get out,” he told Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh. “Why would I need to sign the registration? I will never get out. I’ll never get out ... I will die in prison.”

“You deserve it,” a family member of one of his victims said from the gallery.

After several minutes of arguing, McIntosh ordered Lane to sit down and listen to him.

“We’re not talking about a single act here,” the judge said. “We’re talking about multiple acts, committed back-to-back over a period of time. So absolutely, absolutely, in looking at everything I have to look at ... the court is comfortable that the sentence that was imposed here is an appropriate sentence.”

Assistant Prosecutor Kacey Chappelear had asked for a maximum sentence of more than 95 years after Lane pleaded guilty in November to separate attacks on four women over a three-week period in the fall of 2016. His guilty pleas were to four counts of rape, four counts of kidnapping and two gun specifications.

Lane was arrested thanks to the quick thinking of the 16-year-old victim, who got his license-plate number after she was abducted at gunpoint while walking to a bus stop in the 2200 block of Innis Road in Mifflin Township at about 7 a.m. Oct. 22, 2016. He raped and robbed her before dropping her off near where she was kidnapped.

Police used the plate number to track down Lane and obtained a DNA sample. It matched DNA evidence collected from the 16-year-old and three other victims: two attacked on Sept. 30, 2016, and one on Oct. 9, 2016, all in Columbus.

Lane admitted to raping the 16-year-old and a woman who was visiting from Minnesota when she was abducted at gunpoint outside an Easton-area apartment building. He claimed that the sex with the other two women was consensual.

He offered a brief apology in court, saying he hoped the victims “can move through the hurt and damage I’ve caused them.”

The mother of the teenage victim, now 18, spoke on behalf of her daughter, who did not attend the hearing.

“What happened to my daughter was unimaginable for a 16-year-old,” she said. “She’s not the same person anymore ... I’m asking you to never allow this man to ever see the light of day.”

Two other victims spoke, including the Minnesota woman, who flew to Columbus for the hearing.

“He took a part of me in some sense that I don’t think I’ll ever get back,” said the Minnesota woman, who was driven around by Lane in the trunk of a car and forced to withdraw money from an ATM before being raped at a motel. The trauma was so great, she said, that she quit her job and stopped going to school.

The other victim told the judge that a maximum sentence wouldn’t be enough for Lane. “He’s a scumbag,” she said. “He’s a disease to the earth.”